I’ve had a revelation about my ICT development work, namely, how to build easy-to-use websites for NGOs who have very limited ICT capacity or knowledge, and I sure wish I’d figured it out sooner.

I’ve started using WordPress as a content-management system (CMS), and it has dramatically improved my website turnover. More importantly, the organizations benefit from self-content management, as these organizations can begin using the CMS tools packaged with WordPress to begin releasing news and information about their work.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the quality of their communications will increase, especially if they had no devoted capacity to do external communication work it in the first place, but let’s compare against some of the major International NGO sites in Bangladesh:

• DfID Bangladesh (it’s absolutely terrible!)
• ActionAid Bangladesh (more up to date but suffering from something as simple as bad navigation)
• VSO Bangladesh (we don’t even have one, I’m embarassed to say)
• CARE Bangladesh is the only one that stands out from the crowd. Although the site provides a lot more information about CARE’s work, it still suffers from some design issues such as misshapen photography and inconsistent navigation—plus most of their pages still use static HTML! (So was I a few months ago, as I hadn’t done web programming for years already), but that’s why I’m writing about revelations today.

It is apparent that few of the local offices of the major International NGOs in Bangladesh commit any resources to communicating on the Internet, which is a shame because it is my belief that grassroots voices are the ones that need the most promotion. The internet’s communications tools provide this capability this extremely easily and cheaply.

Compared against some of my latest work on WordPress (the content on these sites isn’t ready yet—but the point of this blog is that I don’t have to put the content on myself—the local staff can):

• Ashar Alo Society, Dhaka
• Gram Bikash Kendra, Dinajpur

Again, using a customized WordPress engine circumvents these issues of inconsistency and provides for a much better user experience, which results in greater professionalism and hence, more ability to attract donor funds. Kudos to the folks at WordPress for empowering us this way.

For the techies out there, here is some more knowledge: Currently I’m using Dreamhost as my web-hosting service, as Dreamhost provides a one-click installation of a WordPress blog with a set of ready-to-customize themes. I don’t even muck around with the database installations or configurations—the folks at Dreamhost have taken care of it all.

Some of the packaged themes even use drop-down or pop-out menus, which in my view is one of the best ways to set up a navigation menu, given the SEO benefits and “coolness” of a pop-out CSS menu.

Any other thoughts from the greater web-building audience? I appreciate any advice as I’m trying to improve my skills here too..

**Update:

Here are a few other links for the major I/NGOs and development actors in Bangladesh:

• Concern Universal and Concern Worldwide’s Bangladesh site.
• CIDA’s Bangladesh Site

I will keep adding more as I find them… mainly because I might be looking for a new job soon!!